OER at the University of Calgary

The Pilot Project was announced in March 2017 at UCalgary Open Education Week, with the call for proposals being released in July 2017. Workshops were held for academic staff interested in obtaining an OER grant. In late August 2017, the UCalgary OER research assistant was hired and committee met and decided on the ten pilot project grant recipients. A list of the recipients and details of their projects can be found here. The project runs until June 30, 2018.

We’ve been running our Open Educational Resources pilot project for 6 months now, and have a diverse group of profs and students building OERs for 10 courses in a wide range of disciplines. Funds for these pilot projects were provided by our Provost, through our Vice Provost Teaching and Learning. University-funded projects that will reach many students in the next few months.

The cool thing is there are 10 other projects (or more?) that happened outside of the pilot project. Some with Alberta OER funding, some with funding from elsewhere. So, 20 OER projects at one university, building resources to improve learning and reduce costs for students. Love it. Can’t wait to see the UCalgary OER showcase as part of Open Education Week 2018. A lot has happened in a year!

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4 thoughts on “OER at the University of Calgary”

As the point person on open at the U of S, I’m curious where the “other” funding came from. Also, what has driven the interest in the work happening around OER at the U of C? We have a fair bit of interest, but time is a significant barrier.

Hi, Heather! Some of the “other” funding came from research grants (dissemination of work…), some came from our Teaching and Learning Grants program, and some was funded by faculty or department resources.

Much of the interest came from our undergrad students union – they’ve been looking for ways to reduce costs for students, and this is one way.

One thing we’re finding is OER is being conflated with Open Access publishing – OER is not just saving a PDF of a journal article and slapping a CC:By license on it…

Thanks, Sylvia. It’s pretty exciting, seeing what people are doing in these projects.

Because they’re still under development, some of the projects aren’t online yet. But, after the pilot project, all will be available – whether as a full website, or as a collection of documents published to our library’s repository.